A GOOD AGE: Paul Schrader's tribute to those who served

Sue Scheible The Patriot Ledger @sues_ledger

Monday

Oct 29, 2018 at 6:23 PMOct 30, 2018 at 7:54 PM

Braintree native Paul Schrader, a former Hanover resident, lives in Sandwich on Cape Cod and volunteers at the Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne. He calls it an honor to help veterans, their families and visitors and has stories to tell.

BOURNE — Four miles south of the Bourne Bridge off busy Route 28, you enter an expanse of peace and solitude, sacred for many. People seek out the Massachusetts National Cemetery year-round for a variety of reasons. To bury a family member who served in the nation's armed forces or their spouse or dependent child. To plan ahead for their own final resting spot. To visit the grave of a loved one, perhaps with friends, and commune, draw strength, even make amends. To honor all who have served.

In all these endeavors they can count on the help of people like Paul Schrader.

A Braintree native and former Hanover resident, Schrader, 79, is one of 17 volunteer greeters at the Massachusetts National Cemetery, which is part of the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

"It is an honor and a privilege to be here and to serve and is how we need to treat each other," he says. "This is a tribute to those who gave so much to our country and to their families."

Last Wednesday, Schrader sat at the glass-enclosed reception console inside the front door of the cemetery's administration building, where he has been a volunteer greeter for five years. He answers the phone, fielding questions from the public. He helps visitors use two gravesite locators, one outside, to look up the names of veterans and find the cemetery section where they are buried. When committal services are held — five to 20 a day — he helps direct traffic as the corteges form.

Sometimes mourners arrive off schedule. One day a man jumped out of car, putting on his tie as he ran to the office. "I hope I'm not late," he said. He was a day early.

Schrader graduated in 1957 from Braintree High School and in 1973 from Northeastern University. He and his wife Clare, married Feb. 11, 1961, have five children and lived in Hanover from 1964-1976, moved to Texas and then moved back to Sandwich in 1997. He worked as a consumer advocate in Hyannis with the state Attorney General's office from 1999 to 2013. After he retired, he saw a news story that an employee who mowed the lawns at the National Cemetery had been injured. Having served in the National Guard, he called and volunteered to do the mowing. That was not allowed under liability rules but he was encouraged to become a greeter. It was a new position in the increasingly busy main office; more than 70,000 people are buried in the 734-acre cemetery.

"Paul was one of our first volunteers and having been a mayor of Friendswood, Texas, he had a lot of experience working with the public," says Administrative Officer Barbara Cellucci of Weymouth. "He was a perfect fit and gave us a lot of great ideas and helped us develop the core plan for what out volunteers accomplish every day. He's a huge asset to us and is extremely good at reading people as they come in and helping them to satisfy their reason for coming here. The volunteers are a core piece of our operation. Without the volunteers satisfying the easy phone calls, it would be very difficult to get through the day."

Schrader, a naturally compassionate man, has responded to a range of emotions by cemetery visitors. One memorable experience was with a man in his 40s who arrived disheveled, intoxicated, seemingly lost. "He said he was trying to find his father for the first time since he had died more than 20 years ago," Schrader recalled. "So I helped him, told him where the grave was, we chatted and I said, 'I don't know what has transpired between you and your father, that you have been separated for so long. But it's time to forgive him or let him forgive you and make tomorrow a better day, because you cannot change the past. You can only go forward." He was reminded of the saying, "Fear and regret are twin thieves; they rob you of your yesterday and your tomorrow."

He gave the man a hug and watched him go off to visit his father's grave. The man has returned several times, looking better. "I feel that I did something that really helped someone," Schrader says. In another unusual encounter, a woman who had finally learned the identity of her biological father through an obituary had done some research and had come to find his grave.

"We usually have a very full day of visitors who always need help finding where everything is," Cellucci said. More volunteer greeters are welcome. There are also other volunteer crews who come in to trim the trees and do landscaping.

For more information about the Massachusetts National Cemetery, call 508-563-7113 or visit the website. The main office is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The cemetery is open from sunrise to sunset year-round. To volunteer, contact Barbara Cellucci at 508-563-7113 Ext. 105.

On Saturday, volunteers with Raynham’s Paul Monti will place flags at every gravesite in the cemetery. Monti lost his son, posthumous Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. First Class Jared C. Monti, in Afghanistan in 2006. (Schrader and Monti were both in the Braintree Warriors Drum and Bugle Corps in the 1950s.)

The cemetery's Veterans Day ceremony is at 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4

The Friends of the Wareham Veterans Council has dedicated an area at the traffic rotary outside the entrance to Massachusetts National Cemetery as Hero’s Circle.

Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com, 617-786-7044, or The Patriot Ledger, P.O. Box 699159, Quincy 02269-9159. Read her Good Age blog on our website. Follow her on Twitter @ sues_ledger.